commafruit.co.uk. welcome.

I attended a protest march in London yesterday in opposition to the wars currently being engaged by the UK. These photos are available in a Flickr set.

Crowds at Trafalgar Square

Manchester University Student Union sent two coach-loads of people.

A temporary stage was set up.

Emotive slogans.

Tens of thousands of people flooded Trafalgar Square and the surrounding area, but what little media coverage there was of this played the numbers down.

The fact that McDonalds just carried on regardless was fairly amusing.

Damn straight.

The majority of placards at the protest were produced in the thousands by organisations (I carried one from the CND), so more sincere, hand-made versions stood out well.

Final phase of the rally at Westminster.

CPGBs started chanting about revolution. Great to see people enthused, but that wasn’t really the topic of the day chaps.

I noticed these placards lying around at the very end, seemed to sum up the feeling of the day.

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On Wednesday I went down to London for the Future of Web Apps conference at ExCeL, was a fairly packed couple of days, so worth listing a few* of the talks that I enjoyed most and the impressions I took away.

Heather Champ & Derek Powazek We’ve Got This Community - Now What?
Non-technical discussion about managing a community, and how to deal with potential problems that arise. Example: rather than blocking problem users, make the site incredibly slow for them, so that trolling becomes tedious rather than fun.

Robin Christopherson - The Art of Attractive Yet Useable Sites
Insightful look at the state of the law in accessibility as regards the web, and the current (woeful) condition of it in practice. Most interesting for me was the demonstration of how screen readers see major websites (thought I could have done this research for myself), and how badly built some of them are, Amazon, for example, was comically bad. The only people to receive any praise for their efforts in accessibility were Google, who are really going out of their way (e.g., gmail has hidden notes for screen reader users).

Heidi Pollock - Taking Your Application Mobile
Extremely nervous sounding talk about the web for mobile devices, recurring theme being the extreme fragmentation in the standards used by different devices, and how as a developer she never aims to achieve perfection across all platforms, or even many of them (there are over 3000 differing mobile web devices). One of the best presentations of the event IMO.

Leah Culver - Web app dos and don’ts
Bits of advice for web development from the head developer for Pownce. Talk was full of practical advice, I just still don’t really get the point of the project (someone asked what the point advantage over say, email was, and the answer was that Pownce would be more "fun", what!?)
BTW, I have invites for this, if anyone would like one please reply to this post.

John Aizen & Eran Shir (both from Dapper) - Practical Semantic Web
A fascinating look at how some of the effects of the promised Semantic Web can be achieved using the existing web content and tools such as Dapper. This intersects with both my dissertation and one of my major modules for this year, I will likely write more on this in due time.

Erika Hall - Copy is Interface
Largely common-sense (or what should be) information about use of language on the web, but demonstrated in an entertaining way, worth getting the slides for.

At the end of the first day there was a live filming of Diggnation, for which well over 1000 people were in the audience. Constantly interrupted by drunks, and Kevin/Alex bantering with each other and the crowd, this was brilliant to watch, but I have no idea how they’ll edit it for the web.

Other stuff: Adobe AIR looks incredible. They were really pushing it (as the lead sponsor), giving out free O’Reilly guides (little ones) and giving constant demos. Can see me getting very into it in the near future.

* Just look at the schedule, I’m not summarising all that!

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It begins. Train to Paddington, tube to Waterloo, Eurostar to Lille. Met Valentin, nice flat, whole thing is a loft conversion. His flatmate is away so I have a real bed rather than a couch. Had a tour of the city. Ate “Welsh”: bread, with ham on top, then put in a bowl and covered with cheese, then a fried egg on top, served with French fries. Heart disease in a bowl.

Breakfast at Tunisian café - Tomato salad, coffee. France is largely closed on Sunday. My French is terrible. Train to Kortrijk, then change at Antwerp for Rotterdam. Belgium, the west at least, is as flat and dull as I remember. Let’s get to Netherlands. Many smokers. Many pretty girls, maybe a better ratio than England. Arrive Rotterdam only slightly late. It’s raining heavily. The Netherlands, and in particular the approach to Rotterdam, is beautiful. Reading On The Road has put me in the mood, but just realised I don’t even have enough Dutch to order food.

Climbed up the Euromast, weather could be better, but views still amazing. “Euroscope” is a great idea, goes even higher. Commentary in Euroscope all about how every sight/attraction is the biggest/best/first in the Netherlands. Everyone I’ve spoken to speaks English. Explore Rotterdam for a while longer, then take a train to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is alive in a way totally apart from Rotterdam. Walked down an alley, well, a street, lined with ‘coffee shops’. Feel slightly stoned already. Found the person I was staying with, shared a bottle of wine and slept.

Spent a day exploring Amsterdam, avoiding bikes and canals, looking at the naval paintings at the Rijksmuseum, then in the evening went to a couple of bars with my host and her friends, and a Spanish guy she’ll be hosting the next night.

Bus to Copenhagen takes 14 hours, changing at Hamburg. We arrive in the centre at 4:30am, I find the central station and sleep on a bench. Wake up and I’m being poked and shouted at in Danish. Realise it’s a guard thinking he’s moving a vagrant on. Go to breakfast with a girl who receive the same wake up call: muesli with yoghurt and real maple syrup and a strawberry smoothie, yum. We do some sightseeing - including the Palace, which has been demolished by war and fire, then rebuilt, five times, “in a show of Danish power”. It strikes both my companion and I that if the Danes were so powerful they would not have to constantly rebuild their palace. Found a hostel.

Next day I get a call from my friend from yesterday suggesting we go to a festival in Malmo, Sweden. Sounds good. In the mean time, took the walking tour. It’s well designed: Copenhagen, in particular the parks and the area around the harbour, is beautiful. “The Little Mermaid” statue is small and unremarkable. There are rowdy tourists everywhere making photo-taking difficult. I try not to look like one. In shops and when talking to people I am simply foreign, and English is assumed. In France and the Netherlands, I’m an Englishman. I prefer the former. The Festival is huge, dozens of bands, dancing, theatre, films. Eat Waffle-type sticks with cinnamon.

The train from Copenhagen to Zagreb takes 23 hours. Northern Germany, naturally, looks like southern Denmark, speckled with those white electricity windmills. They are majestic. The night train into Zagreb is quite pleasant, easier to sleep on a train than I expected. Zagreb is fantastic, but then so is the weather, this helps a lot. I have nowhere to stay (yet), but I am not worried. Walked, south of the train station to a newer area of town guidebook suggests is boring. Not sure this is so, it’s different, less friendly perhaps. Met some guys at a hostel. We eat Mediterranean food (I have a HUGE anchovy pizza, which I don’t finish), then go to some bars.

Second day in Zagreb is as hot as the first. Accosted by mad old Croatia woman, convinced I’d understand her if she spoke German. I think she was offering me somewhere to stay, but who knows. Explored the town a little more, took some pics. It strikes me that with this trip, as soon as I get to know a place I’m away again.

Night train to Split arrives 6am. It’s best, I think, to arrive early, that way you arrive before the town is really open. Split is beautiful, the harbour and the hills rolling away up from it. The buildings vary in both style and quality of appearance. Maybe sometime in the past controls on what to build were lighter. I have a strong tan. Luckily I didn’t burn, maybe more by luck than judgement. Explore the town, swim in the sea, then go back to where I’m staying. Other English-speakers there, and we go out for food and drinks. Went to a bar on the beach, ended up swimming in the sea.

Following day, got on a bus at 10am (groggy from the sea and the sun, hungover from the beer), headed to Dubrovnik. 4 1/2 hour trip. On arriving, there are maybe 20 locals shouting that they have rooms. When it becomes clear that I’m in need I’m swamped with people, and commandeered by an old woman who forces me to look through a photo album of her house. Walk to the old town, easy to see what a pretty place it is (all white stone walls), especially at dusk, but it’s extremely focused on tourists.

Now in reverse: bus back to Split, then train to Zagreb. Destination Verona. Border check at Dubova (entering Slovenia from Croatia) is quite aggressive, not sure this is normal. Six armed guards, passports looked at suspiciously, and everyone’s name and other details recorded, except mine! Trains Ljubljana, to Venice, to Verona unremarkable. On the bus to the hostel (of three bus rides I paid for one), I asked the driver if this was the way to ‘Piazza Isolo’ (knowing it was), he said he’d shout when we arrived. Three Canadian girls then asked if I was going to the hostel, I was. One then announced she believed she’s picked up food poisoning in Rome, and was sick into a ‘Zara’ bag. I (gallantly) let my only towel be used as a mop. We left the bus and after some walking, found the hostel, then went for a drink. This is when I realised how unpleasant these girls were - after five days in Italy they’d picked up almost no Italian (I had to explain ‘Mi Scuzi’ to them), made no effort to communicate with the locals, and were generally not nice to be around. They complained about everything they could - the hostels, walking, the food, the fact that there were no corner shops. Then, when talking about travelling, everything was expressed so crudely: “we did this AMAZING pub crawl”. Not the sort of traveller I want to meet or be.

Explored Verona, loved the food. My passport has taken some punishment, but is actually ok. Train to Milan. Like Munich, Milan station is laid out with all the shops and facilities at one end, then the platforms stretched out at 90 degrees - resembling a comb. Easy for navigation, but annoying if you need to get from the far end of one platform to another. Journey from Milan to Marseille. I’d fallen asleep on the way to Ventimiglia, woke up to find myself on a dark, empty carriage, but the train was still moving. Frantically I grabbed my stuff and ran through the deserted carriages to find a guard, who just laughed (friendly) when he saw me and whistled for the train to stop. He then wrenched open the doors and pointed me back the way we’d come. Turns out it’s about 1/4 mile of walking on railway tracks in the dark - maybe not the best plan. When I get into Ventimiglia station lobby, there are people all over the floor. Some of them, like me, have big backpacks, but the majority appear to be local Italian homeless. Trains to Nice then Marseille uneventful.

Marseille is edgier and rougher than I tend to picture France being, but really that makes it more exciting. Wandered around all day, stopping occasionally for food/drink. Found the hostel (after figuring out the local buses), it’s a lot more intimate than others, but everyone is speaking French. I kept up for only a few moments before losing the thread. This is such a strong incentive to learn the language, but I’m sure that for a long time going forward there will be no reason to. Didn’t realise until I went to lie down how tired I was. Been walking around in sandals all day and my feet ache to the point where I’d call it painful. Didn’t notice before.

Marseille is quite different from other cities I’ve visited this trip. It’s much less focused on catering to tourists - it doesn’t need them! I could really see myself living here (assuming I spoke French), perhaps more so than anywhere else I’ve been. TGV is extremely smooth, best train I’ve been on.

30 minute delay for the train to Lille when we change at Lyon. Suits me, I have a huge delay at Lille before getting on the Eurostar. Take a walk outside the station at Lyon (it’s sunny), and am amused at realising I’m only vaguely aware of where in France Lyon is. Spent the whole journey studying maps and routes, but the TGV makes all that redundant.

London. Feels like home (even though I’ve never lived here). The underground is the best civic transport system I’ve used in the last two weeks - impressive when you consider the scale of London. Train ticket London to Evesham is my most expensive purchase of the whole trip!

Trip is over, but I think travelling is addictive - I want to go somewhere! Even though I’m exhausted I feel more vital and optimistic than ever - I think that makes the whole thing seem worth it.

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I don’t know who you are, maybe you don’t either. I can look at the server logs and see where you are, what browser you’re using etc., but does that really mean you? More likely, this represents the machine you happen to be using - there is nothing human about this information.

Are you a different person on-line to the one you are off-line? Have you just one on-line identity? If you have more than one, how strictly do you segregate the different identities?
The reason I’m asking all this is that I have several on-line identities - in effect I am several different people. Until recently I’ve always kept them separate, and I’ve certainly kept them completely apart from my "real life" person. I now wonder, is this such a good thing? There are a few points to consider…

• Am I losing out by keeping the different versions of me apart? A (now ex-) coworker and I spoke a couple of months ago about his website. It’s a typical tech/geek affair, but he publishes some really quite polished articles about .Net programming, Linux, and the web. Unfortunately, he doesn’t link it to himself in real life at all, nor does he use it on his CV etc., for reasons I could not understand, beyond vague fears about privacy. It strikes me that he would be well served to use this as a showcase of skills, if only as a supplement to more concrete reference etc.
• Is it honest to be so fragmented? I maintain different handles at different hangouts on the web - could it be that this is dishonest, in that I’m never entirely frank wherever I am? I would never behave this way in real life (explicitly concealing aspects of myself from others), yet we think nothing of doing so on-line.
• Is this state of affairs sustainable? It’s not just having different names and passwords, if a behaviour or persona is altered depending on the situation/location, it could be easy to lose track of yourself, and start to blur the line between just being, and playing a character. Granted, I’ve not even begun to feel this way - but in relative terms the web is in it’s infancy, and this seems to be the direction we’re headed.

People love to say (and think) they are “not a number”^w, indicating that they are not serialisable, they are unique - but I wonder if this isn’t a fallacy. There must be thousands of people in the world with the exact same name as me (especially as I have no middle name), but I am guaranteed to be the only person with my particular mobile phone number - which I’ve had since 1999, a significant portion of my life. We can conclude from this both that simply a name is not enough to be considered one’s identity, and that if other identification methods (such as numbers) are more effective in distinguishing people, they should not be dismissed.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is that lately I’ve been changing my attitude to identity, especially on-line. While before I liked to keep everything separate, semi-anonymous, and certainly in no way linked to my off-line self, now I’m looking at consolidating a few usernames and opening up a bit more. The first thing that brought all this on has been the way social networking has shifted the way I (and I think others) view interaction with the web. Where previously it was just accepted that one had a pseudonym for use on-line, sites such as Facebook not only encourage you to use your real name, but demand that the you use a valid email address (or they used to, I’m aware that Facebook have since opened their doors - more on this and Facebook in general later I think).
Even more recently, the thing that’s made me think seriously about acknowledging this site in particular as my own is that I’ve been slowly updating my (as yet mediocre) portfolio. If this is to have any value in attracting clients, demonstrating myself etc, it must be provably linked to me as an individual.

The problem of identity management will ultimately come down to individual preference - people have to work out for themselves the method which works out best for them.
Myself, I’m going to take care to be mindful that I am in fact a single entity, and make sure that my output reflects that.

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I’m always amused by mistranslations, and someone on slashdot reminded me of this:

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”

This site has some other amusing examples, including:

The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, “Salem - Feeling Free,” got translated in the Japanese market into “When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.”

Amusing. Much debate has already begun on the subject of the Nintendo Revolution being renamed the Wii, most of it pretty negative. I think it will catch on, especially once people accept that they mean “We” rather than “Wee”. Also, it affords them plenty of opportunity to show off the crux of the thing: those awesome controllers.

One thing is slightly annoying however: “Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.” (Gamasutra). What a terrible backward step. Never mind though, it’s not like I (or anyone else) will not have the facility to play DVD’s on other stuff that’s likely to be kept next to the Wii, it just seems like DVD playback should’ve been a built-in feature.

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